Big O's

by M. S. Parker

  But what else could I tell them?

  I asked her to marry me.

  We had champagne.

  She fell asleep next to me.

  When I woke up, she was gone.

  She was the only thing missing.

  “What was she wearing the last time you saw her?” Broad asked, head bent over the notes he was making. He seemed to take them more diligently than his boss.

  Face hot, I looked away. I didn’t like talking about Maya like this. Both of them had given me the side-eye when I told them Maya had been living with me for two months.

  “She was wearing a…” I waved a hand in the air. “One of those girlie night things. Negligee. Silk and lace.”

  “And you’d just asked her to marry you. She had the engagement ring on when you fell asleep?” Ridley asked, voice pointed. “She said yes? Not ‘we’ll see’, or ‘let me think’, but ‘yes’?”

  “Huh. Let me think,” I said sourly, glaring at him. “Yes, damn it. She said yes! She threw her arms around my neck, laughed and kiss me and said yes. It’s kind of hard to forget when the woman you love is excited when you propose.”

  Ridley went to fire something back at me—I could see the retort burning in his eyes. Then he stopped, shaking his head.

  “Of course. I can still remember when my Beth said yes.” He reached down and picked up the engagement ring I’d showed them, the one I’d found in the bed. “Of course, I couldn’t afford a rock like this. Why would she leave it in bed?”

  “She wouldn’t!” Fuck, why were they still asking me questions?

  Why weren’t they out there looking for her?

  I hadn’t realized I’d said any of that out loud until Broad got to his feet and blocked me as I started to pace. “We’ve already got men out asking questions, Mr. Jackson. We are looking for her, I promise.”

  His sincere expression didn’t make me feel any better.

  “Why don’t you take a look at her things, see if there are clothes or books, anything like that missing?” He hesitated, then offered, “Maybe she got nervous and decided to take a few days. Have you checked to make sure she didn’t borrow one of your cars?”

  “She won’t drive one of my cars.”

  But I hadn’t thought to check, and now I felt a little sick.

  I’d have to get Mrs. B to check. The drivers hadn’t taken her anywhere, but what if she’d decided to go for a drive? Maybe she had needed to think, to clear her head. Everything had changed for us so fast. If she’d gone for a drive and gotten lost, or the tire had gone flat…

  I went to the hall and called for Mrs. B, explaining in a low voice what I needed her to do.

  “Sir, I’ve already checked,” she whispered, shaking her head.

  The cops were watching us closely. We both ignored them. Moving in closer, I ducked my head. “You checked?”

  “Yes. As soon as I realized she wasn’t in the house.” She twisted her apron in her hands, looking dejected. “I know she isn’t comfortable driving in the city, but I thought maybe she’d changed her mind, or needed time alone. Sometimes I do that—I need to think and be by myself. So I went to the garage. All of the cars and your motorcycles are accounted for, Glenn.”

  Her shoulders heaved on a hard breath and I thought she might be fighting the urge to cry.

  I rubbed her arm. “Thanks, Mrs. B.”

  “She’ll turn up,” she said, offering me a smile.

  “Of course, she will.”

  I wonder if either of us believed it.

  I wasn’t quite ready to say it yet, but I was getting scared.

  Twenty-four hours later, I was ready to admit it.

  I wasn’t just getting scared.

  I was fucking terrified.

  Nobody had seen her.

  There was a movie mogul who lived across the street who’d dealt with the near-kidnapping of his only daughter, almost ten years ago. It had made him reclusive and paranoid, and his estate—nearly double the size of mine—was protected by a massive wall, with guards who regularly patrolled the perimeter alongside burly dogs.

  There was a gatehouse at the entrance, and more than once, as I drove up, I’d hear those idiot dogs baying like somebody was trying breech Fort Knox—instead of me just driving to my own home.

  But none of the guards had seen anything last night.

  No cars approaching.

  The dogs hadn’t gone crazy at the sight of some unknown stranger.

  There was nothing new or unexplained to account for Maya’s disappearance.

  If she’d left and walked out the front door, then the guard across the road hadn’t seen her, and the dogs hadn’t picked up on her presence, either.

  It was almost as if she’d disappeared from our bed. Just…vanished.

  Now, as I sat on the couch, listening to the updates from Detective Broad, I nodded, feeling numb inside.

  The fact of the matter was, there were no updates.

  I was bracing myself for what he had to say. Dreading it to my very core.

  “I think we have to consider the possibility that she left, Mr. Jackson. Maybe she just…wasn’t ready to settle down.”

  Slowly, I tightened my fist around the ring. I’d searched for nearly two weeks before I’d found the right one. I hadn’t wanted one that was big and gaudy—it needed to be delicate. Elegant, yet fiery and bright. Just like Maya.

  Now the diamond glinted at me with cold, cool distance and I wanted to hurl it across the room.

  Instead, I squeezed my fist tighter until the edges of the stone cut into my palm.

  “She didn’t leave,” I said quietly. “She wouldn’t.”

  “Are you certain?” Broad hesitated before pressing on. “How well do you really know her? Where did she come from? What sort of family did she have? Had she ever been married before?”

  “Stop.” Over the past two days, I’d tormented myself with those very questions, and the fact that I couldn’t offer any answers was a burning rub. But that didn’t change the fact that I knew Maya—I knew her in my blood, in my heart, in my soul.

  She hadn’t just left.

  Broad was quiet for so long, I looked up to see if maybe he’d left.

  He hadn’t.

  But now that our eyes met, I wished I hadn’t looked at him at all.

  The damn bastard was too insightful, and I could tell he was all too aware of my doubts.

  “Just get the hell out,” I said, voice raw. Jerking my head toward the door, I said it again. “Get the hell out! Don’t come back unless you actually have something worth telling me.”

  Eying the yellow, crinkled piece of paper I’d pulled from my pocket, I looked from the address I’d circled to the building in front of me. I’d made some calls, talked to a few people—but none of them seemed to think anything other than what the cops were saying.

  She probably left. If the cops aren’t finding anything, that’s probably because there’s just nothing to find, Mr. Jackson.

  But one of them had voiced different concerns.

  Nobody across the street saw anything. There are no signs of forced entry on your home. No note. No ransom demand. She was just there when you went to sleep, then she…disappeared?

  I’d answered yes.

  Are you a light sleeper?

  The cops hadn’t asked me that. But yeah, I was a light sleeper. I usually heard when she got up, whether it was to slip into the bathroom or go get a drink. It didn’t really wake me, but I was…aware.

  I hadn’t been aware of anything the night she disappeared.

  I’d relayed that, feeling even more uneasy, still expecting to be shot down, expecting another trite response: Listen to the cops, Mr. Jackson. Let it go.

  But instead, the private investigator had surprised me for the second time.

  That first time had been when she had answered the phone—she. The number listed belonged to a Randall and Randall—I’d asked to speak to one of the investigators and assumed the woman who answere
d was a secretary. She’d simply identified herself as Hannah Randall, and proceeded to hammer me with questions.

  Now, with an appointment scheduled with both Randalls, I blew out a breath.

  Hannah had told me to come in and talk to her and her brother. I asked if they were going to take the case. She’d said come in, then added, I’m not buying that a woman would walk away from a house, that far out of town, in the middle of the night—right after her man proposes.

  She said her brother wasn’t so certain, and he’d probably handle most of the investigation—after all, girls weren’t taken seriously, she’d added caustically. But she wanted me to come in and talk to them—no charge.

  Hannah Randall was the only one who hadn’t just totally written me off. Although I had to admit, the sleazy looking building in front of me wasn’t filling me with a lot of confidence.

  “Fuck. Just go inside,” I muttered to myself.

  Grabbing the handle, I twisted it so hard, it almost came off in my hand. Inside, I heard people yelling—two people. A man and a woman.

  And the voices were coming from behind the door marked, Randall and Randall.

  Great. Just…great.

  The faint hope I’d felt since talking to Hannah started to fade away, but that didn’t stop me from pushing the door open. The yelling continued for a brief moment, neither of them taking notice of me right away.

  “The girl probably just walked away, Hannah! Why are we wasting time on this? You got any idea how much a big-time movie star can ruin us? We’re just getting on our feet,” the man said, his voice harsh and angry.

  “And what if she didn’t walk away? The cops aren’t even really looking.” The ‘girl’ was far from a girl, I had to admit. She was curvy in the best possible way, and probably a couple of years older than me. with a short, bobbed haircut. The strands were curly and dark brown, shot through with threads of a lighter soft gold. Her eyes were a snapping blue, and she glared at her brother, her soft jaw set. As she crossed her arms under a full set of breasts, she lifted her chin, bracing that steel backbone. “We got into this to help people out, remember?”

  “Hannah…” He stopped, blowing out a breath. He went to shove a hand through his hair and stopped, finally catching sight of me. As he turned to face me, his face went ruddy with embarrassment.

  There was no denying the two of them were related. Their eyes, the color of their hair—they could have been cut from the same cloth. But while she was all soft and feminine curves, he looked like he was a solid, brick wall. He was shorter than me, but broad and stocky, with a jaw that looked like it could—and had—take a hit.

  “Mr. Jackson, I assume,” he said after clearing his throat.

  “Yes.” I slanted a look at Hannah. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “No, please…interrupt.” She gave her brother a dark look. “Please forgive my brother’s rudeness.”

  She came forward, a hand outstretched. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “No. I’d like to just…get this done.”

  “Of course.” Understanding lit her eyes, and she stepped to the side. “Please come in. Have a seat. I’ve updated Clive on the information I have, but if you could start from the beginning, it would be helpful.”

  Angling a glance at Clive, I studied him for a quick moment, debating. He had his hands in his pockets and was making a pointed effort to not look directly at me as he rifled through a file on his desk. “Am I wasting my time?”

  “No.” Hannah’s voice was emphatic.

  But I didn’t want an answer just from her and Clive seemed to get that. After a few more seconds of a heavy silence, he looked up and met my eyes. “No, Mr. Jackson, you’re not.”

  3

  Maya

  The internet was proving to be a bust.

  People who thought you could find everything online clearly hadn't tried to discover anything about time travel. Legit time travel.

  Oh, there were plenty of websites about theories behind it, and I spent more than a few hours trying to figure out if I was just as crazy as some of the so-called time travelers I discovered when trying to research the possibility.

  There was one site where the author tried to convince the visitors that he was a traveler from 2143, and he’d to come back to prevent a catastrophic event that would take place in his time if we didn’t ‘fix’ things. But he didn’t elaborate on ‘things’, and the little counter on his site—seriously, who still used those?—showed he’d only had 1163 visitors, including me, since the site went active nearly three years earlier.

  I guess humanity was doomed if he was real.

  It was a depressing thought, and one that made me start focusing more on the 1960s and Florence, Glenn and whatever else I might glean from research.

  Finding information or articles on Florence was easy. She’d had an extensive online presence, had even kept an online blog up until four years ago. The final entry had been from her daughter, letting her fans know that Florence was stepping back from public life to focus on her family and staying healthy, at the advice of her doctors.

  Glenn, though—it was as if he’d ceased to exist after the summer of 1962.

  The information on him was sketchy, limited mostly to a few short paragraphs on Wikipedia and a movie website. That was practically it.

  The media had fawned on him.

  I remember after Florence had nearly died, he’d had a hard time going ten feet without having a camera shoved in his face. It had gotten to the point that we rarely left the house without wearing scarf and sunglasses if we were going out together, needing to protect our privacy.

  As I realized where my thoughts were going, I stopped and shook my head. “You believe all of this,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my neck.

  Yeah. I did. Maybe it made me as crazy as the traveler from 2143, but I really did believe I’d travel to 1962 and fallen in love with a moody, sexy bastard.

  Yet, I needed to see some proof; have some sort of tangible evidence.

  Which would explain why I was trudging up the steps of the largest library in Los Angeles. It had an extensive catalog of digitized periodicals, with a focus on everything local—from Hollywood legends to things that had happened in and around Los Angeles, dating back to the early nineteen hundreds.

  I was hoping to find anything, really.

  Most of the general searches I’d done for Los Angeles or Hollywood in the sixties had just netted me information on the civil rights movement that had finally reached California. If I really wanted specific information, I was going to have to dig for it.

  As I settled down to work, my phone buzzed, and I checked the message.

  Uncle Daniel, wanting to know what I was up to.

  I texted him that I was at the library, reading up about Florence. I left Glenn out of it, not wanting to make him any more curious than he probably already was.

  Curious… or concerned?

  “The same thing,” I muttered.

  Two hours later, I leaned back in my chair, craning my neck to the left, then to the right.

  So far, I hadn’t discovered much of anything, other than the fact that after Florence’s overdose, her career had gone into overdrive. She’d viewed her second chance as just that—a second chance.

  She’d gotten married—and not to Glenn.

  I couldn’t help but be grateful for that.

  But there was so little about Glenn.

  Rubbing my weary eyes, I stretched my stiff back, then bent over the monitor again. I clicked over to look at yet another page of articles, eyes blurring. I don’t know how long I stared at the headline before it finally clicked.

  Hollywood Golden Boy Loses Fiancée

  My mouth went dry, and I zoomed in on the grainy print. The library had worked hard to digitize decades worth of newspapers and magazines, and it was far better than what I would have found back home—but when the article was printed on poor quality paper, there was only so much that could be done
.

  Still, grainy or not, I could read the print just fine and the name Glenn Jackson jumped out at me.

  I scrolled further down, and my heart clutched inside my chest when I found myself staring at a near-perfect artistic rendering of…me.

  “Oh, man…”

  And that wasn’t the only thing.

  At the end of the piece, there was a picture of Glenn walking down the steps with a woman. And although the quality of the picture wasn’t great, there was no denying who it was.

  It was me.

  “It really did happen,” I whispered.

  “Ma’am?”

  I looked up to find myself staring into the sweet face of a woman, a pair of retro cat-eye glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was clad in a bright, poppy red dress, with her hair was swept up into a bun.

  “Yes?”

  She glanced at the print-outs around me, then smiled at me. “We’re closing in fifteen minutes. I just wanted to let you know. You seem awfully caught up.”

  Fifteen…I looked out the window and caught the vivid colors of the sun as it sank closer to the horizon. As I did so, I grew aware of the ache in my bones and the crick in my neck.

  I had been there for hours—like, six of them. I hadn’t so much as used the restroom, or even gotten a drink of water.

  “Film buff?” She picked up one of the articles, studying it for a moment before looking at me, still smiling.

  “Excuse me?”

  She put the article on Glenn’s dying—dead—career back down as she gave a soft laugh. “Research like this can only mean one of two things, in my experience. Either you’re a writer, researching for a book, or you’re planning on a career in the industry.” She sighed, a wistful sort of sound. "I had those dreams once myself. So many people come here thinking to make it."

  She left without another word and I picked up the paper she’d put down.

  No, I wasn’t researching or studying up for a career in film.

  I was trying to find out what happened to the man I’d fallen in love with. And this article here, the one I’d just printed out, had been the final nail.